Dividend on Death ms-1

by Brett Halliday

  After a time Shayne abruptly switched his questioning to Mr. Brighton’s condition. On this point Dr. Hilliard was less reticent. He told Shayne frankly that the man’s condition puzzled him. There was no organic disease, yet the patient did not improve. From his study of the case he was willing to admit that Dr. Pedique had apparently done everything possible to effect a cure. It seemed to Dr. Hilliard that Mr. Brighton had simply lost the will to recover. Every test indicated a healthy physical condition, yet he continued to grow steadily weaker. They were, he told Shayne, conducting tests to ascertain whether certain glands were functioning improperly. If these tests tailed to indicate such was the case, he would be at a complete loss to diagnose the ex-millionaire’s malady.

  Shayne listened attentively, asking leading questions and drawing the physician out as much as possible, clearly showing his disappointment when Hilliard failed to confirm his suspicions of Dr. Pedique. After a pause, he leaned forward and asked, “Isn’t it possible, doctor, that certain drugs might be responsible for Mr. Brighton’s continued weakness? Wait!” He held up his hand as Dr. Hilliard started to shake his head.

  “I’ve got a theory,” he went on. “I’m not a medical man and I’m not trying to horn in on your game. I’m simply tying up logic with facts. I’m not accusing anyone-yet. But there’s been a murder committed. Take a long time to think this over before you answer. Is it possible- possible, doctor-that someone having access to the patient could be giving him some sort of drug, some sort of wrong medicine or wrong treatment, doing something to keep him in the weakened condition which you find inexplicable?” He leaned his long frame far over the desk and held Dr. Hilliard’s eyes intently.

  The doctor lifted his eyeglasses and fiddled with them while he considered the implications contained in Shayne’s question. He was an ethical and honorable man. He was fully conscious of his duty toward society. He liked Shayne and he disliked Dr. Joel Pedique. He had read the morning paper and he shrewdly guessed that Shayne was seeking to protect Phyllis Brighton from a murder charge. From his observation of Phyllis he did not believe her guilty. He considered all these things before answering.

  “It is utterly impossible, Shayne. I’m sorry I can’t advance your theory. Really I am.” He settled his glasses back on his nose and shook his head regretfully. “There are, however, certain conditions which preclude consideration of the hypothesis that any outside agency could be responsible for Mr. Brighton’s condition.”

  Shayne sank back with a disappointed, “Damn.” He lit a cigarette and puffed on it morosely.

  “You’re sure?” he burst out finally.

  “I do not,” Dr. Hilliard told him, “offer snap judgments.”

  Shayne muttered, “No. God knows you’ve never been accused of that.” He breathed hard, and the base of his nostrils flared. “That knocks my swell theory into a cocked hat.” He stood up and grinned crookedly. “That’s what I get for having a theory. Hell! I’m as bad as a chief of detectives.”

  Dr. Hilliard stood up with him. “Any time-any information I can give you-”

  “Thanks, doc.” Shayne nodded and ambled out.

  It was almost twelve when he got out of the elevator downstairs. He went to a phone booth and called the clerk at his hotel to learn if there had been any calls for him.

  The clerk had one urgent message. Shayne was to call a Mr. Ray Gordon at suite 614 at The Everglades at once. Shayne thanked him, hung up, and called The Everglades.

  There was a short wait. A voice finally said, “Hello.”

  “This is Michael Shayne. You left a message for me to call you.”

  “Mr. Shayne? Good. Can you come to my suite immediately on a matter of urgent business?”

  Shayne said he could. He hung up and started to walk the few blocks to the hotel.

  CHAPTER 6

  A big man opened the door of 614 at Shayne’s knock. He was almost as tall as the detective, with broad shoulders bulkily emphasized by the heavily padded double-breasted coat he wore. Clean-shaven, the contours of his face were a series of square corners. His lips were thin, his complexion gray. His eyes were cold, as expressionless and hard as two marbles.

  Mr. Ray Gordon’s most distinctive feature was the type of haircut he affected. His hair was clipped high on a square head all the way around from one temple to the other, leaving a mop of bristles on top which stood erect and added deceptively to his appearance of great height. There was nothing else out of the ordinary in his appearance. His blue coat and sports trousers were of fine texture and beautifully tailored, but conventional enough. A modest pearl scarf pin enhanced the quiet gray of a four-in-hand which matched the shade of his soft-collared shirt.

  He inclined his head and stepped aside for Shayne to enter. A large, comfortably furnished living-room overlooked Biscayne Bay. There was no one else in the room, but open doors led off to the left and right.

  Shayne stopped inside the room and turned to face the man, asking, “Mr. Gordon?”

  Gordon nodded. He closed the door and studied Shayne. Not covertly nor antagonistically, but with a curious directness and complete disregard of the other’s reaction.

  “You’re Michael Shayne?” His words were clipped and hard, though not harsh.

  Shayne nodded and stared back aggressively.

  Gordon moved to a chair and motioned Shayne to another one, making no offer of his hand or further greeting. He said, “Shamus Conroy told me about you.”

  Shayne sat down and lit a cigarette. His eyes were veiled. He said, “That bastard?” unemotionally.

  “Conroy said that’s what you were,” Gordon told him. He took a long cigar from a leather case and lighted it with a gold-inlaid lighter. “I considered that a good recommendation-knowing Conroy.”

  Shayne relaxed visibly. “I thought maybe you were a friend of his.”

  “On the contrary.” Gordon considered his cigar with approval. “I’ve got a job for a private dick. One that can keep clammed and isn’t too thick with the local police.”

  Shayne said, “I’m listening.”

  Gordon blew a lazy smoke ring and asked, “Want a drink?”

  “Call your shots,” said Shayne. He stretched out his long legs and looked out the window at the palm-fringed shore of the Beach beyond the shimmer of Biscayne Bay.

  Gordon called, “Bring in a couple of setups, Dick.”

  They both smoked in meditative silence. Shayne heard the clink of glasses through the open door on the left. From where he sat he could see into the open bathroom which led off to the right. The outer surface of the door opening inward to the bathroom was a full-length mirror which reflected the interior of another connecting bedroom on the other side of the bathroom.

  The lights were on in the inner room, and a woman was sitting before a low vanity making up her face. Her back was toward the bathroom, and Shayne contemplated the reflection with idle disinterest. It was a youthful back. The curve at the base of the woman’s head was youthful, and the dark bobbed hair had a sheen.

  A sleek youth came through the other door with a tray bearing two Tom Collins setups. Glossy black hair grew low on his forehead. His complexion was pasty, and his nose was beaked. He was foppishly dressed. He looked as though he might have enjoyed pulling the wings from flies when he was a child-as though he might still enjoy it. There was a slight bulge just in front of his left armpit. He set the tray on the table with a furtive glance at Shayne, hesitated, and then went out as silently as though he walked on tiptoe.

  Gordon mixed the drinks with care and handed one to Shayne. They both drank from the frosted glasses. Gordon asked, “How big an outfit do you have?”

  “I work alone.” Shayne frowned at his glass. “But I have plenty of good men on the string I can call in when I need help.”

  “I noticed,” said Gordon, “that you don’t have an office listed in the telephone book.”

  Shayne shook his head and didn’t say anything.

  “You’ll need all the men yo
u can get for this job I have in mind,” Gordon went on.

  “I’ll get all I need.” Shayne drained his glass and set it down. The girl in the inner room had turned her head and was leaning forward putting an earbob in her left ear. He could see her reflected profile and it was startlingly beautiful. Clean-cut, classic features with an indefinable air of hauteur which didn’t quite ring true.

  “You’ll have to get on it right away,” Gordon was saying. “It’s pretty damned important.”

  “Then,” Shayne suggested, “let’s get down to brass cracks.” The girl had turned her head and was putting on the other earbob. Shayne had a hunch she knew he was watching her through the reflection.

  “Here it is.” Gordon emptied his glass and thumped it down. “A man named D. Q. Henderson is due in town in the next few days. Today, perhaps. He may be traveling under a different name. I want to know the minute he hits Miami.”

  “How’s he coming? Where will he go when he gets here?”

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t be hiring you if I knew the answers.”

  Shayne rubbed his bony chin thoughtfully. “It’s a big order. Tell me more about the man. There are two railroads, a couple of airplane lines, several boats, and a lot of highways bringing people into this man’s town every day. And a lot of them hitchhike, and others come on their private yachts.”

  “You can disregard the last two you mention,” Gordon told him thinly.

  “Which doesn’t help a hell of a lot,” Shayne grunted. The girl had arisen and was moving toward the bathroom untying the sash of her silken negligee. Her eyes were demurely downcast, and he felt she was putting on an act for his benefit. Inside the bathroom she dropped the negligee from her shoulders, and he had a glimpse of brassiere, brief pants, and white flesh before she closed the door softly.

  Seemingly unconscious of the direction and intent of Shayne’s gaze, Gordon said suavely, “If you don’t feel that you can handle the job, say so and quit wasting my time.”

  Shayne said, “Mother of God! Do you expect me to meet every incoming tourist and ask him if his name is D. Q. Henderson?”

  Gordon’s eyes lost the expressiveness of two marbles. His gaze was remote, yet it had a probing quality. Shayne dredged up a grin with some difficulty, remembering the eyes of a captive Gila monster he had once seen.

  He stiffened when Gordon’s hand slipped inside his coat, and relaxed when the hand came out bearing some folded papers. Gordon sorted the papers over and handed a small but very distinct photograph of a spare, middle-aged man, with a high forehead and a clipped mustache.

  “There’s your man.”

  Shayne studied the photograph. “I can have copies made. Is he likely to disguise himself and try to slip in? In other words-does he know the finger is being put on him?”

  “Mr. Henderson,” Gordon told him, “is one of the best-known art critics in the United States. He’ll not be after any publicity, but I don’t think he’ll try to slip in.”

  Shayne nodded glumly. “It’s a job. I’ll put some good men on it right away. And that’ll cost you plenty.”

  “How much?” Gordon’s hand went inside his coat again. This time, Shayne didn’t stiffen. Gordon laid a flat wallet on the table and looked at Shayne with heavy eyebrows lifting in a straight line toward the roots of his hair.

  “I’ll take a grand for a retainer.”

  Gordon’s eyebrows stayed up in a straight line across his forehead. “I’m not hiring you to bump the President.”

  Shayne stood up and said, “What the hell? This isn’t piker stuff. You’re wasting my time.”

  Gordon stood up, too. His face was unsmiling, square-cornered. “You’re pretty tough.”

  “Tough enough.” Looking past Gordon, Shayne saw the sleek youth lounging in the inner doorway with a look of greedy hope on his face. Thin fingers were clawing toward the bulge under his left arm.

  Shayne turned his back on the young man. His lips came back from his teeth wolfishly, and he said, “I’ve changed my mind. It’ll be two grand.”

  Gordon began to smile. It was a curious and complicated process. His lips spread open and the upper portion of his face seemed to lift away from mouth and jaw, making not unpleasant crinkles in the hard flesh.

  He said, “You and I’ll get along,” and lifted two one-thousand-dollar bills from his wallet.

  Shayne accepted them without emotion. He had Henderson’s picture in his left hand. “Let me get this straight. You don’t want this guy hurt or detained? You want him tailed as soon as he hits town-and word sent to you?”

  “That’s it.” Gordon went toward the door. “I don’t want him bothered at all except I don’t want him to communicate with anyone in Miami until I have a talk with him.”

  Shayne lit a cigarette and muttered, “It would help a hell of a lot if I knew where he was likely to go when he arrives.”

  Gordon stared at him for a moment, then came to a decision. “Henderson will likely register at a hotel first. He might not. He might go directly to the Beach or stop to telephone the Brighton residence over there. That two grand is to keep him from doing that.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you say so at first?”

  When Gordon opened the door without replying, Shayne went on. “The Brightons? Rufus Brighton? That’s where they had a murder last night.”

  “So it is,” Gordon agreed curtly. He was holding the door open.

  Shayne went out, saying, “I’ll be around when I need more expense money.”

  Gordon stood in the doorway and watched him go down the hall. He closed the door when Shayne stopped at the elevators and pushed the button.

  In the ornate lobby, Shayne turned to his right from the elevators and went into a cubbyhole of an office with no sign on the door. He said, “Hello, Carl,” to the fleshy man who sat behind a littered desk.

  Carl Bolton was the house dick on duty. He was bald, and had a pleasant, vacuous face. He leaned back and lifted a pudgy hand. “Hi, Mike.”

  The redheaded detective draped his long body on a corner of Bolton’s desk. “What about six-fourteen?”

  Bolton said he didn’t know anything about 614 but he could find out. Shayne said he wished he would, and Bolton went out through an inner door. He came back presently with a slip of paper.

  “They checked in this morning from New York.” He read from the slip. “Mr. Ray Gordon, his daughter, and a secretary. Secretary’s name is Dick Meyer. Why? Something phony?”

  “The secretary,” Shayne told him, “is a torpedo. The daughter is too damned pretty to be just a daughter. Keep your eyes open, guy.” He stood up.

  “Wait a minute. What’s the dope, Mike? You got something on ’em? Give.”

  “I’ve got nothing on them-yet. I’m just tipping you.”

  “Look,” Bolton complained, “don’t I always play ball with you?”

  “Sure.” Shayne strolled out, saying over his shoulder, “They’re clients of mine, heavy with sugar. That’s all I can give you. Call me if anything breaks.”

  It was twelve-thirty as he walked out of the hotel. He went to Flagler Street and turned west, stopped at a delicatessen when he thought about Phyllis and lunch. With a paper bag containing sliced meat, cheese, rolls, and some fruit, he went on to his apartment hotel and in the front entrance. The clerk said there hadn’t been any more calls for him, which was all right. He was whistling unmelodiously when he got off the elevator and went down the corridor to his door.

  He stopped whistling when he saw his door standing wide open. He hesitated and started to put down the food, then squared his shoulders and walked on in.

  Passing through the doorway he noted that the lock had been jimmied to force the door open. He showed no surprise as he met the gaze of the two men awaiting him in easy chairs.

  CHAPTER 7

  Will Gentry took the cigar from his mouth and grinned mirthlessly at Shayne. Peter Painter didn’t grin. His face was flushed, his eyes angry. He was sitting stiffly erec
t and he didn’t move as Shayne entered.

  Shayne said, “Hello,” as though it was the most natural thing in the world to find them there. The living-room showed no evidence of having been searched. The bedroom door was closed. Shayne circled the two men and went toward the kitchen with his paper bag.

  Gentry asked, “How goes it, Mike?” Painter didn’t say anything. His hot eyes followed the detective’s lounging figure into the kitchen.

  The breakfast dishes had been washed and neatly put away. Shayne set his bag down on the kitchen table. Without a glance behind him he put water on the electric stove to boil, measured coffee into the Dripolator.

  “Where is she, Shayne?” The words came incisively, like small pellets flung from a tiny gun.

  Shayne looked over his shoulder at the Miami Beach chief of detectives, standing spread-legged in the doorway. The smaller man’s body was tense with anger. Shayne turned away without answering, carefully fitting the top back on the coffee can.

  “You’re going to talk or else.” Painter’s words came more softly but with an undertone of shrillness. “You can’t give me the run-around, Shayne!”

  Shayne kept his back turned and began whistling softly, lifting down a long loaf of French bread and getting a knife from the drawer. The wooden-handled butcher knife came first to his hand, and his whistling lips twisted into an ironic grin as he began slicing bread with it under Painter’s gaze.

  He heard a funny gurgling noise behind him. Then Gentry’s lumbering footsteps and his soothing voice.

  “Getting apoplexy won’t help, Painter. Let me talk to Mike.”

  The detective continued to slice bread with his back to them, cutting each slice uniform and thin, pleased with the razorlike edge on the knife.